CounterPulse is launching into a mind-bending spring season with a series of performances that activate cultural pluralism through human-scale movements and bodily resistance. In spring 2018 we navigate through interplanetary time as lovers and cultural vanguards. Kicking things off in February, the legendary Kei Takei returns to San Francisco for a rare three nights of […]

The Performing Diaspora residency at CounterPulse returned this year with two works mapping the connection between ancestry, queer identity, and tradition asking, ‘How do we collaborate with the force of the unseen? How we can transcend the toxins flowing in our bodies and societies?’ The residency creates a platform for artists of color to tell […]

Combining pompous burlesque acts with intimate confessions, ,wild child” blurs the line between natural and artificial, authenticity and masquerade, reality and fantasy. The performer morphs from one character to the next and reenacts past encounters to discover what sexual desire is. They play with femininity and other gender roles to unveil the joy, fear, shame, violence, […]

Questions to Consider (proposed by Randy): Who are your Lxs Desaparecidxs? In what ways has being in this process shifted your own creative practice, if at all? Where do you see the piece going next and how do you see the work evolving? What questions have persisted since the process began and what new […]

When given an empty canvas, I stare intently at my toes as I wiggle them, plan which wall to remove and couch to shift were the place mine, examine my palms as I ponder my life as written in wrinkles and wonder which wrinkle is Wednesday’s. One might say I do nothing. I certainly do […]

How do you conjure queer ancestry through a dance performance? How can we form and unform psychic territories held through our lineages? Randy Reyes’s new work borrows Chinese Energetics and systems of improvisation to weave queer ancestral lineages throughout an elaborate number. Lxs Desaparecidxs—created in collaboration with performers Jose Abad, Emelia Brumbaugh, Gabriel Christian, Felix (Sol) […]

A little over a year ago, ABD’s Artistic Director Anne Bluethenthal opened one of our weekly Skywatchers meetings by asking: Who has your back? And what does that look like? It was early fall, a distressing time for many as 45’s campaign gained traction (little did we know…), but there was a tinge of hopefulness […]

We create this piece in exploration of our own lived experiences around nurturing. We honor the different/range of relationships we and other LGBTQ folx have with our gestational/biological mothers. This piece is for our many many nurturers/mothers, including our Trans/(gender)queer/GNC/Two-Spirit selves. Photo from most recent Work-in-Progress showing at Counterpulse SF Motherhood is […]

Javier has been excited to explore how environmental toxicity connects intimately to the motherhood we inhabit and relate to. She’s especially inspired by Mowhawk researcher and midwife Katsi Cook, who below writes of our gestational mothers—the ones who bear us in their womb: Of the sacred things that there are to be said about this […]

The House Managers of CounterPulse are the busy bees ensuring our Front of House is running smoothly. These dedicated individuals are seamlessly relaying information among artists and technicians, overseeing our box office ushers, and making sure all our patrons are accounted for. So who are the Managers of The House? Take a moment to read […]